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When my team is leading with 400+ points and the enemy has less than 100, I know that the match will not end so easily. The rubberband mechanics of Dominion will favor the losing team and postpone the match until it becomes artificially "a close game". My team will win with ~50 points left or so.

No matter how much effort you put into having that 400+ point lead, no matter how hard you fought for that advantage, the Dominion system will artificially create this long, drawn out illusion that the losing team can still win. It bothers me because it's the system that induces the artificial "close game". It's not the enemy team that's shaping up and getting better with player skill. It's the system feeding gold to the losing team, protecting them from the loss of Nexus points by champion deaths, modification of respawn timers, etc.

Anyone else bothered by the artificial feeling of "a close match" that the game induces? For me, it waters down the game. Victories don't feel rewarding because I know that 50% of my effort was spent combating the game system and not the enemy team's players. "Close matches" don't feel like player skill is deciding victories; rather, the system's aid for losing teams feels like a huge factor.

Quite a few Riot dev posts...! And a patch preview dedicated to this thread? lawl!

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1364202

Here's one:

Quote:

Brackhar:

To be clear, these systems aren't actually intended to be "catch-up" mechanics, and if they've fallen too far on that side of things then we need to ratchet them back. What they are intended to do is counter-balance some of the design implications of making a very small sized map. When making Dominion we quickly found that attritional style gameplay, the need to go back to base and the travel time associated with reaching a point again, was a very important factor to allowing back and forth gameplay from both teams. You see this on Summoner's Rift when you look at how champions move and react to one another as people die and fights are resolved. At the same time we also found that a small map was needed to have the battles be engaging and to get the proper mixture of allowing for back caps while also giving people time to respond.

By shrinking the map size we reduced the attritional gameplay that's core to the game balance, and so we needed to think of another way to create that sense of "travel time" that allows for a good back and forth. Adjusting the respawn timers seemed the best way to create this type of gameplay. We considered basing the adjustments off of the number of points a team controlled at any given time, but we scrapped that idea as it then felt punishing to ever get more than 3 points and led to stale gameplay. Basing it off of the aggregate score was less penalizing tactically and overall a better experience.

As an analogy to SR, think of it like the respawn adjustments are simulating how far into enemy territory your 5-man group is running. The closer to the enemy base you are the more likely you are to win the game, but the more punishing dying can be in terms of letting the opposing team rebound.

This is a main area of our design focus right now to tune this properly as I agree it's a very sensitive subject, and the more feedback that you guys can give us over the coming patches will help us guide it in the right way. Definitely expect continual changes on this topic.

I've had 3 games that last less than 10 minutes. If you start to loose after a 400 point lead think about the enemy team comp and how much better they become with items. If theyre still the same level of bad/good clearly youre doing it wrong.

Hmm, I only knew that the losing team had a lower timer on respawn after death
But I think thats kinda the purpose of dom, to be making a come back, unlike SR where once you're fed and doing good, its kinda GG. So it all depends on the team comp in that "late" game of how usefull the increased income and lower respawn time will be.

It's more like the winning team getting overconfident, continuing to push hard into the enemy's close base points and getting killed for no reason.

This literally happens all the time. Inexperienced players in their thirst for kills with dive in hard at the enemy's safest points, when they seem to not realize that the enemy must come to them in order to win.

I've had 3 games that last less than 10 minutes. If you start to loose after a 400 point lead think about the enemy team comp and how much better they become with items. If theyre still the same level of bad/good clearly youre doing it wrong.

Agreed, while the mechanics of Dom do allow for comebacks. They don't enforce a comeback. If you lost a 400 point lead it was yours to lose. I've had several games lost with such a lead, and I've had several games were we never dropped below 350 and the game was over in minutes.

I recently had a game where we had an early lead and then slowly over the match we just started losing it, and we were 50 points to losing. That's when it occurred to a couple of us that they had steered us into a ninja capping game, that they were simply better at. We finally got our 3 points back and made sure that everyone knew in chat that we had to defend only. They're team that was Superior at ninja capping just didn't have the meat to push us off our points and we won the game. But it was only that realization, and subsequent decision that enabled us to come back, from their come back.

You have to understand why you had the lead in the beginning, why you are losing it now, and what to do to get it back. In a game where farming and level advantages haven't nearly the impact, team comp, and strategy is brought into even sharper focus.

Hmm, I only knew that the losing team had a lower timer on respawn after death
But I think thats kinda the purpose of dom, to be making a come back, unlike SR where once you're fed and doing good, its kinda GG. So it all depends on the team comp in that "late" game of how usefull the increased income and lower respawn time will be.

The thing I find interesting about Summoner's Rift is that there's a large diaspora between skilled players and mediocre to bad players. You can clearly see the skill difference between two opposing teams. When you're winning, you know you're winning because you're simply outplaying the enemy team. Player skill is a huge factor in winning.

Dominion has this "Big Brother" syndrome. When a team is losing, the big brother system lends you a hand and says "It's okay that you suck, I'll help you win!". The system aids the losing team by modifying the game mechanics to support them. This results in an artificially-made "close match"...not due to player skill, but simply due to the system's aid for losing teams.

When a losing team on Summoner's Rift turns the game around and wins, it's because the players on the losing team did something awesome that turned everything around. There's that epic turn-around moment. Most importantly, it's a result of player actions. Not the system. Dominion lacks that epic feeling of player skill turning the tides of a match. It's more of a passive, artificial, babysitting nudge from the game system.

The extreme amount of intervention from the game system just bothers me.

The extreme amount of intervention from the game system just bothers me.

I don't really understand this. The other team is not getting anything bonus that you are not getting - they simply get the same base exp and gold that you are getting - you will still have more gold/experience if you've killed them more or killed more creep.

That's part of the reason why Dominion is so exciting. The fact that a comeback is possible at any time with the right play if your team comp isn't bad, and you're never really at a point like what commonly happens in Summoner's Rift where one team is so far ahead that it's virtually impossible for the losing team to come back.

It makes Dominion much more fun to watch for those unfamiliar with the game, and honestly, a lot more fun to watch in general. There's absolutely nothing exciting about laning for the casual observer.

The thing I find interesting about Summoner's Rift is that there's a large diaspora between skilled players and mediocre to bad players. You can clearly see the skill difference between two opposing teams. When you're winning, you know you're winning because you're simply outplaying the enemy team. Player skill is a huge factor in winning.

Dominion has this "Big Brother" syndrome. When a team is losing, the big brother system lends you a hand and says "It's okay that you suck, I'll help you win!". The system aids the losing team by modifying the game mechanics to support them. This results in an artificially-made "close match"...not due to player skill, but simply due to the system's aid for losing teams.

The extreme amount of intervention from the game system just bothers me.

I dont really agree about being a bad player in dom cuz you may be dieing alot. As I said, team comp matters alot in dom. If enemy has a lot of assasins (akali, talon etc.) a squishy champ is really dead meat. But with that squishy champ, you wreck in SR cuz you're much safer there behind your turrets/teams support. It's really hard to compare your player skills from SR to dom.